It looks like The X-Files got its iconic quote of "the truth is out there" wrong because a supposed megadump of alien files has been wiped.
There's been a recent rush of intrigue into aliens, with the most cynical suggesting that the U.S. government is using it to distract from the release of certain files relating to a certain deceased financier.
However, it was former President Barack Obama who kicked off our current obsession with aliens, telling podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen: "They're real but I haven't seen them. They're not being kept in Area 51. There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States."
While Obama has since walked back some of this and said he was just getting into the spirit of the podcast, one UFO expert claimed it's setting the world up for a formal announcement from the government.
Advert
Things got even crazier when President Donald Trump vowed to release all available documents on aliens, while NASA even responded to these wild promises.
The tin foil hats are out in force, as just days after Trump said he'd open the extraterrestrial floodgates, one researcher and UFOlogist claims 3.8 million files relating to all things space have been deleted. Founded by John Greenewald Jr. when he was a teenager in 1996, the Black Vault serves as a civilian repository of federal records that have painstakingly collated via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
As a conspiracy theorist's wet dream, the Black Vault covers everything from JFK's assassination to the MKUltra human experimentation program, Joe Biden's German shepherd, and supposed UFO videos taken by the US Navy.
Posting on X, Greenewald Jr. confirmed that his main document server had been wiped, explaining: "This was HUNDREDS of gigs of data in thousands of directories, and it just vanished. In addition, numerous server-side directories had permissions changed, and file ownership changed.
“It is unclear why, and I've never seen this in the history running web servers for The Black Vault."
Although he admitted he doesn't "fully suspect foul play", Greenewald Jr. continued: "In my honest opinion, I feel it was a very oddly timed server maintenance done by the hosting provider, that went awry.
“They didn't catch it, and when I did, they didn't take blame and there was no way to fully prove what happened, and by whom."
For those worried that the Black Vault is down and out, Greenewald Jr. reiterated that he has numerous backups and was already in the process of restoring the deleted files. He asked users to flag anything suspicious when downloading anything from the site.
Cheering his own work, Greenewald Jr. reminded people to keep multiple backups in multiple places, concluding: "I remain the sole person who runs the Black Vault, and this will be the start of my 30th year running the website, come this September. I began hand typing documents in high school to a 5 megabyte free space server back in 1996 (Primenet!).
“I have now grown to nearly 4 MILLION pages of records online, running 4 dedicated servers just for the site, and no data deletion, accidental or otherwise, will ever keep me down for good."
He told his followers to "Stay the course. I am. And I'm not going anywhere."
Over the years, Greenewald Jr. has filed 11,000 FOIA requests with the US government, also sharing when a request has been ignored or had little response from the CIA, FBI, and other government organizations.
As the Black Vault operates as a source on all things covert for journalists and the general public alike, many are glad that Greenewald Jr.'s work hasn't been lost to the ages.